


i'm a trust fund baby you can trust me

by victoriousscarf



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon up to the point "What if T'Challa went to America as an undercover exchange student", Cousin Incest, Don't Ask Don't Tell, M/M, Military Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13873449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: Erik has a plan, a plan he's been following since he found his murdered father. Graduate school is just another step along the way. The last thing he's expecting is the exchange student lying about his name to knock him right off track.OrThe au where Erik and T'Challa meet when they're 20 and 19 respectively and it changes an awful lot of things.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I needed T'Challa to quote Burr from Hamilton for the title but I do. 
> 
> Set somewhere around 2004 and using Erik's movie background for education. I admit my research on the US Naval Academy was the wikipedia page and a few google searches but what I'm getting is that for Erik to have graduated from the USNA at 19 is insane? And possibly impossible but we'll go with that, and that he's already enlisted in the military when he goes to MIT for grad school. Which means this is also the time of don't ask don't tell. 
> 
> The beginning is strongly inspired by [this tumblr post](https://nobunyaaga.tumblr.com/post/171109122776/some-notes-from-that-really-self-indulgent-au) but I think I veer off substantially from the fluffy slow burn they wanted as it progresses.

It wasn't exactly like Erik had extra time to hang around International Studies classes. He had just lost track of which class used which classroom when he had set up in the back corner. Some people wrote best in coffee shops, he wrote best in the back of classrooms.

He only glanced up twice during the class. The first time when he realized they were watching one of those annoyingly feel good movies about the civil rights movement, and the second when he reached the end of a paragraph and took a moment to stretch out his shoulders. Glancing around the room as he stretched, he noticed a boy sitting only a few empty seats away from his corner, one hand clutched tightly to his wrist and quiet tears streaming down his face.

Erik blinked, did a quick check at the screen, and found himself snarling slightly at the heroic sounding speech they were giving the black leader on screen. As if speeches every changed anything, as if victory had ever been achieved for those oppressed in America. But the boy—probably not much younger than him, though his face was rounder, and his heart apparently less broken—wasn't crying with some inspired emotion. He looked wretched, like someone had killed his dog in front of him.

Erik realized he had been staring at this boy for almost five minutes, crying at a movie that seemed to bore the rest of the class, or give them some sense of advancement. Scowling at himself, Erik finished shaking out his shoulders and started typing again, going right through the class and the next one before finally packing up to move somewhere else.

Except a few weeks later he was in the same class again, the professor squinting at him as if wondering if he just skipped most classes and if he should yell at him for clearly not paying attention.

Which would have been hilarious if he didn't in fact, end up paying attention to most of the class period. “It makes no sense,” the boy from the other day said, and Erik found his eyes going to him. “Who would even accept missionary style aid? It is giving the people what someone thinks they need without any regard for their intelligence or agency.” Erik frowned, because he had an accent, one that almost sounded like he should know it.

“Well, they're poor, aren't they?” another student asked, and the boy's mouth twisted. “So isn't taking anything that's offered in their interest?”

“A hundred boxes of toothpaste when people are starving?” the boy asked, incredulous. “How do the groups sending the aid even justify their decisions? If they are morally trying to aid, shouldn't they listen to those who they are sending the aid to? These poor countries aren't going to have their poverty solved by shoes that don't even fit into their culture, but by initiatives to raise the standard of living that the people are themselves a part of, like by offering them investment and business—”

“The models of aid have changed,” the professor said at the front of the class.

“Have they changed fast enough if this sort of aid is still allowed?” the boy demanded, and Erik was staring at him, at the way his eyes were wide and earnest as he argued for the dignity of people to not be subjected to the whims of those wealthier and more powerful than them.

He didn't manage a single paragraph and it infuriated him.

-0-

That was going to be the end of it. There were plenty of other class rooms and crooks and loud crannies to hide in. He did not have the time for a boy with a foreign accent and too much earnestly. Especially since Erik couldn't quite tell if he wanted to punch the boy or take his hand and explain to him why he needed to let go of all of that right now if he was going to survive this country without getting shot.

Except he was on the bus that afternoon, sitting by the window and staring out at nothing, going through formulas in his mind when he saw the same boy running along the side of the bus for the door, barely catching the bus before it left. Erik found his hands curling because the bus was mostly full and the boy was grinning at the bus driver, who was giving him a narrow eyed look.

“How's your understand of exact change doing today?” the driver asked.

“Much better,” the boy said, dropping some coins into the machine and glancing down the line of the bus. Erik put on his most annoyed face and the boy sat down next to him anyway, muttering something as he adjusted his sleek black messenger bag about the inefficiency of fossil fuels.

“You know there are bus passes, right?” Erik found himself asking.

“Yes, of course,” the boy said, whatever that meant. “Do you often skip your classes so frequently.”

“I ain't in your class,” Erik said and the boy fully turned his head to look at him. “Was working on my project and got distracted, that's all.”

“Oh,” the boy said and they sat, Erik's leg pressed against his by the small seats as the bus squeaked its way down the street.

“Where's your accent from, anyway?” Erik asked, because he still hadn't quite placed it.

“Isn't that considered an insulting question here?” the boy asked and his whole face seemed to light up when he smiled.

“Not brother to brother it ain't,” Erik said, shaking his head.

“South Africa,” the boy said and Erik considered him again. “I came as a, hm, exchange student?” and there was something about the hesitation that made Erik's brows go up.

“So you care a lot about foreign aid, huh?” Erik asked and the boy's face shifted a few times, somewhere between annoyance and amusement.

“What they're doing is a travesty,” the boy said. “Aid without conference is amoral, and just another power structure.”

“Don't the people need it though?” Erik asked. “Moral or not, can beggars be choosers?”

“They should!” the boy said, leaning forward. “And those with wealth and power should not be making the choices for them. They deserve dignity, everyone does. Not just in aid either, but these trade agreements are often just excuses for the rich to steal from the poor and give them back pittances—”

“How can a kid from South Africa talk like that?” Erik asked and the boy tilted his head back in confusion. “About the dignity of people. Wasn't Mandela still in prison when you were a kid?”

The boy blinked rapidly and looked out the opposite window. “Isn't that as much as reason as why I talk like this?” he asked and the corner of his mouth twitched, almost like a smile, but almost like he could cry again.

Erik wanted to press his mouth there to figure out which one it was.

Upon realizing the thought, he carefully pulled his knee away, trying to fold himself smaller into the seat so they weren't quite so close. “Man, I suppose. Seems weird is all.”

“There is a lot about this country I am finding weird, so far,” the boy said and Erik chuckled, a small laugh that faded quickly.

“Yeah, I bet you are,” and when he got up for his stop he expected that would be the end of it. He hoped that would be the end of it.

He had way too much to do and not ever really enough time to do it.

-0-

That night he dreamed about his father, talking to him in an accent not too far off from the boy's, about a fairy tale Erik only wanted to see burned down now.

“The sunsets there are the most beautiful in the world.”

“And the people?” Erik had asked. “Are the people there kind?”

“They try to be,” his father had said, with his sad eyes, like he always had when he talked about home. A home he loved, but a home he despised, the fires of rage lit in his heart at their inaction. “But they are a blind people, born into a privilege they do not understand.”

“Is that why they hide?”

“In part.”

“Would they be kind to me?” Erik asked.

“I hope so,” his father had said and when Erik woke up he had more of an impression of the conversation than a solid memory. He lay in bed longer than he planned, staring blankly at the wall, anger curling hot and heavy in his chest, under his breast bone.

He wanted to hurl things at the wall, destroy something, hurt someone, just to ease some of the ache inside him.

-0-

The next time he ran into the boy it was at the grocery store, Erik with a basket full of mostly produce, and the boy with a cart full of probably half the store. “How many people do you cook for?” Erik asked, squinting at it.

“Myself,” the boy said and looked down. “Is this too much for one person?”

“Shit, like half of that is going to spoil before you can eat it,” Erik said and the boy shifted.

“I, uh, am not used to shopping for myself.”

“Let me guess, your daddy is pretty rich,” Erik said, shaking his head. “How long have you even been here?”

“This is my first semester,” the boy said, a bit stiffly and Erik looked from him to the shopping cart.

“Yeah, I'm not even sure how you're going to make good meals from what you have in there,” he said, shaking his head.

“Do you know how to cook?” the boy asked, almost hopefully.

“Well, sure, it's survival,” Erik said, because there had been plenty of nights when there was no one else around but himself to put food into him. “Besides, that's one of the things I learned at school, how much food matters to your health. It's not exactly rocket science.”

“I think rocket science is easier than food,” the boy muttered and Erik found his brow twitching up again. “You said you learned it at school? Is there a class here?” and he sounded almost hopeful.

“Nah, I mean at Navy. Or rather the, uh, United States Naval Academy. Gotta eat healthy to be fit.”

The boy blinked at him. “You go there? Isn't this a little ways away?”

“Well, yeah,” Erik said. “I already graduated. This is grad school.”

“Really? I thought you looked the same age as me,” the boy said, and looked him over again which made Erik shift slightly.

“I graduated when I was nineteen,” he said and somehow that made his entire face light up, like he was proud of Erik or something, for working and pushing and pushing, his anger driving him faster than anyone else he knew. And here they stood now, Erik clutching his basket and this rich foolish boy with his mad cart of food, like the boy knew Erik, like he had a _reason_ to be proud of him.

It made something sluggish, like magma, burn inside Erik. He just didn't know exactly what it meant.

“That's amazing,” the boy said, and his eyes were bright and he looked so pleased.

“Yeah, whatever,” Erik muttered. “Look, your cart is giving me a heart attack just looking at it. We gotta put some of this stuff back.”

“We?” the boy asked.

“You obviously are shit on this on your own,” Erik said, already tossing a box of sugary and useless cereal back on the shelf. “It huts just looking at it.”

Erik made the mistake of dropping his basket into the cart at one point as he picked up vegetables, and he should have seen the boy sneaky paying for it himself, and insisting Erik couldn't pay him back for the favor of apparently saving his taste buds from himself.

“You know, Bambi,” Erik said, scowling at his bags which the boy had handed him with a smile. “Third time I've run into you this month and I still don't know your name.”

The boy paused, like he wasn't really sure with what to say to that. “Thomas,” he said, and cleared his throat, something about the pronouncement just a little off.

Erik winced for him, because it was one thing for his mother to have named him Erik, because he had the name his father gave him too, burned into his heart and of his home. But for a boy coming from Africa itself to have a name so obviously given by the colonizers made him pity the boy, and wonder what he could have been named instead.

“My name's Erik,” he said instead of any of that.

The boy—Thomas—offered him his hand quite seriously. “It is good to formally meet you,” he said and Erik squinted at the hand before taking it, shaking it firmly. Thomas' eyes widened slightly, perhaps at the force of the grip, before he let go with another smile. “Thank you for helping me navigate American grocery stores.”

“Yeah, whatever, anytime,” Erik said and realized with a sinking feeling that he _meant_ that.

He needed to have his head checked.

-0-

T'Challa sat, looking up recipes on a site Erik had given him, scribbled down on the back of a business card Erik obviously didn't feel a need for. T'Challa found himself turning it over in his fingers several times, considering the handwriting from different angles.

He had been the one to beg his father to let him come to the United States, even if only for a few years, to see what the world outside of Wakanda was like. He wanted to learn how others thought, and to experience it for himself. He had even finished college in Wakanda several years early to prove he could do well in any sort of school.

But now that he was here, he felt almost unbearably lonely. Pretending to be someone he wasn't grated on his nerves constantly and he had to remind himself several times every day not to start yelling about how different Wakanda was, how much better their transportation was, and their art, and their compassion for each other.

He missed Nakia, his mother and father, W'Kabi, and perhaps most of all he missed little Shuri, who could already speak circles around him despite only being four. Perhaps, he was starting to think, he should have simply stayed home, like his father had initially wanted.

But no, he promised himself, looking at a recipe and even wondering if he had enough pots and other various kitchen utensils to make what he was looking at, he would make it at least a year. He had begged and pleaded for this, and he would not run home without experiencing what he came here for.

Besides, he thought to himself with another smile at Erik's handwriting, perhaps he was starting to make a friend.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when you get so much positive reactions it actually makes you terrified to post the next chapter? Yeah, it's a bit like that... (Also moved and started a new job this week so it's... been a week).

It wasn't that Erik started avoiding Thomas after that.

Except that Erik started avoiding Thomas.

It was just that Erik had too much too do, a goal he had barely begun. Besides, MIT was a big enough campus he had lost potential friends there before. It was easy to just not have a reason to run into each other, even if it meant Erik heading to a different store slightly more out of his way or walking more to stay in shape instead of taking the bus all the time.

For a couple weeks that even worked. He avoided Thomas like it was easy, and he never spotted those wide dark eyes looking for him. Until he made the mistake of going to some fair, one of those events where they gave out free food and posters and tried to get people to care about some cause or another. He had barely gotten a cup of free coffee and a cookie in hand when Thomas was there, something complicated in his expression as he smiled at Erik, who was too frozen to run like he should have.

“There you are.”

“What, you looking for me?” Erik asked, and it was casual because he knew how to make anything sound casual.

“Well, why not?” Thomas asked. “I hadn't seen you around.”

And Erik's stomach did an annoying twist, because Thomas had been looking for him, had been aware that he wasn't there. “I was busy,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Thomas said with a smile, picking up his own cookie. “You have some time now?”

Erik wanted to scowl, to snarl and say no, but he ignored the books burning a hole in his bag and said instead, “Sure.”

Which was how he lost a whole afternoon to wandering around with Thomas, eating free cookies and looking at posters, tearing apart the science presented in them and finding himself surprised when Thomas joined in.

“Aren't you in international studies?”

“That's a general requirement,” Thomas said, and he hadn't stopped grinning at Erik since they pulled apart someone's experiment on sustainable fertilizer.

“So what are you actually studying then, man?”

“I don't know yet,” Thomas said. “Universities are... structured somewhat differently. Possibly physics or something similar.”

Eirk wanted to take the excitement that caused and stamp on it until it shut up. “Yeah? You any good at it?” and he laughed at the arch look Thomas gave him.

“I would say so,” he said and later that night Erik couldn't quite be mad he fell asleep on his textbook.

-0-

The next time Thomas sat down next to him at a coffee shop and handed him a cell phone with Erik's name already put in, waiting simply for his number.

“You're assuming I have a phone?” Erik asked, teasing and Thomas just gave him a raised eyebrow.

“It is 2005, is it not?” he asked and Erik couldn't help but turn the Stark branded phone around in his hands a few times, reminded once again how much more money Thomas had to have.

“Sure, but it's pay as you go so who knows, it might not always work,” he said, dutifully punching his number in and handing the phone back. “You know Tony Stark went here, right?”

Thomas frowned for a moment and turned his phone over, like he was noticing the name for the first time. “Ah, yes,” he said. “He's quite famous, isn't he?”

“Oh just a little,” Erik said, teasing. “Maybe he's a bigger deal in the military, but I'm pretty sure most people would recognize the name.”

Thomas' nose wrinkled slightly. “He makes weapons, doesn't he?” he asked, still considering his own phone.

“Sure, but it's a big company,” Erik said. “And I think he personally likes to tinker in a lot of different things, which is why you have that phone there.”

One corner of Thomas' mouth was compressed. “Still,” he said, frowning at his phone.

“That's expensive as hell man,” Erik said, nudging his shoulder with one hand. “You should appreciate your daddy getting it for you.”

“My old phone would have sufficed,” Thomas muttered. “But he insisted since I was coming to the states,” and he sighed so Erik didn't press.

He actually did not want to hear about Thomas' dad. Or the rest of his family. He hoped they were wonderful, and they must have been, considering Thomas' heart and his compassion and his brain, but Erik did not want to actually _hear_ about it, his own mother and father both gone. His mother's mother had tried to take care of him, but her heart had never been strong and his grief had almost resulted in catastrophe.

After that he had been passed from one apartment to the next, one cousin to the next aunt, as they all tried. Getting into college early had been a relief, an escape to the discipline he had always wanted.

Suddenly Thomas looked up at him, from where he still held his phone. “Why did you join the military?”

Erik blinked, yanked out of his own brooding. “Excuse me?”

“The military,” Thomas said. “You're already enlisted, aren't you? I read about Annapolis. Why?”

“You don't have any damn idea what it's like to be poor in Oakland, California, do you?” Erik asked, shaking his head. He pushed his reading glasses higher on his nose and pretended to shuffle a few of the papers in front of him before looking up again. “For a lot of kids, it's the only way out.”

“But,” Thomas started.

“No,” Erik cut him off, and he didn't miss the way Thomas' spine stiffened slightly, or the way he obviously was biting his lip to keep himself quiet. “Nah, you don't get to try to figure that out. It's the way it is because desperate people take any line thrown to them. How do you think this country gets so many damn kids to sign up to be soldiers across the ocean against other oppressed people like themselves? This army ain't made up of the rich people's kids, it's made up of the poor.”

“But you're brilliant,” Thomas said. “You had options.”

“Sure, maybe,” Erik said, feeling anger curling in his stomach. “But you're acting like you think I don't want this. I joined up because I'm going to become the best I can. Because I'm going to be a goddamn great solider.”

“Why do you want to fight?” Thomas asked, a crease between his brows.

“Because I've always been at war,” Erik said. “Might as well put that to some fucking use.” When Thomas just kept staring at him, he clenched his hand under the table. “Don't fucking pity me. Just stop it.”

“I can't help it,” Thomas murmured, looking away.

“Well don't,” Erik snapped. “I can't stand it. I am what I am. My life is what it was and what it is. It doesn't have to make sense to you, you don't have to approve it—”

“No,” Thomas said quickly. “No, I'm not disapproving. I just, I don't understand. Your life is so different from mine.”

“You're the one who just shoved their phone at me,” Erik started, surly.

“I am your friend,” Thomas said quickly, his eyes wide and Erik just froze. He stopped moving, stopped breathing, because Thomas was looking at him so earnestly, so seriously, saying soppy shit like that. “I want to be your friend. Perhaps in part because I do not understand you, but also because I have appreciated our time together. Very few people I have met have bothered to make any time for someone else.”

“Okay,” Erik said, looking down to cover whatever feeling was crawling up his throat. “Just stop being such a soppy shit.”

“Soppy?” Thomas asked in confusion and Erik's mouth curled.

“Sure. Like sappy. Like, this outpouring of emotional shit.”

“Ah yes,” Thomas said and Erik dared to look up at him, to realize his expression was the one he had when he was about to say something teasingly insulting. “I forget about American men and their inability to cope with emotion.”

“What? Like South Africa doesn't have patriarchy?” Erik asked and _something_ in Thomas' expression flickered again before he laughed.

“Maybe,” he said and turned to look out the window, allowing Erik to stare at his profile, biting the inside of his cheek because something this stupid boy was just too statuesque. Like, his jawline deserved to be remembered in marble or something, put out on display outside some public building for the world to look at as they passed. “But it is not the same as here.”

-0-

Eventually, Thomas started coming around to Erik's apartment, their coursework spread out over the floor as they worked together.

It was strangely peaceful, to have someone else breathing in the same room, even if they were both intensely focused on something else. Usually Erik just found room mates annoying, which is why he had fought tooth and nail for his own shitty studio.

But there was something natural about Thomas there, sitting on his floor, back straight, talking through his complicated equations like Thomas was the one pursuing an advanced engineering degree.

“You're smart enough to go on to the PhD level,” Thomas said one night, looking at Erik over the top of his own papers.

“Sure, but I only have time for this,” Erik said, scribbling down some notes, and tilting his head to see if considering the problem from another angle helped at all. “Gotta get back to my commission.”

Thomas' mouth thinned again, like it always did. “And after the military?” he asked. “You have a five year commitment, but what about after that?”

Erik's eyes flickered up before down again, because after that was an empty hole, hovering over his entire life, with T'Chaka, king of Wakanda written in it. He had the war dog tattoo, knew what that meant, but surely that alone wasn't going to get him through the door, or get him what he needed. After the military he was going to keep proving himself until he had the chance to rip out the heart of the bastard who murdered his own father.

But even if he could explain that to Thomas without horrifying his sensitive heart, he wouldn't know how to begin to talk about the fairy tale of a hidden kingdom, full of wondrous science and beautiful sunsets and privileged assholes who turned their backs on the suffering of the world.

“I don't know,” he said instead, his vengeance beating out a rhythm in his chest, under his heartbeat, the drive that never allowed him to stop. “Maybe I could come back. Maybe I'd find something else. What about you and your smart brain? Already got your first three doctorates mapped out?”

“Three?” Thomas sniffed. “You think my ambition is only three?”

Erik laughed, throwing a wadded up sheet of paper at his head, because sometimes, when Thomas was warm and there, Erik could even forget about Wakanda and revenge and his father's cold body in his arms.

He had sat there for so long, no tears on his face, holding his father as he went from warm to cold, through the night and into the next morning, waiting for someone to find them and to tear him away from the nightmare his life had become.

It had taken him several days to go looking for his father's things, the chain with the ring on it, the notebook with the map and the Wakandan script.

Later that night, Thomas rose to go, stretching out his back and Erik wanted to ask him to stay, even though he knew all the reasons he never would.

“So,” Thomas said. “The other day we talked about Tony Stark and you seemed to respect him.”

“Sure?” Erik said, shuffling papers and putting books in a pile so he wouldn't trip over any stray ones in the morning.

“He's coming to campus to give a talk,” Thomas said.

“He often does,” Erik said, being purposefully difficult, which made Thomas huff in annoyance.

“Would you like to attend?” he asked, slipping into the formality he usually did when Erik was being difficult.

Erik's eyes flickered up. “What, together? Do I even need to ask how you got tickets?”

“I'm sure you could have too,” Thomas said and Erik scoffed. “At the very least the fact you have already graduated the naval academy gives you cultural capital.”

“But not enough monetary capital to buy tickets for a talk by Tony Stark, alma mater of his or no.”

“Look, would you simply like to go or not?” Thomas asked, and Erik finally gave in and agreed, if only because it made Thomas' entire face light up when he smiled.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“How is America, son?” Ramonda asked, her arms folded gracefully over her lap, while Shuri bounced in and out of the frame.

“It is hard,” T'Challa said, wanting to lean forward into the screen and find himself at home. The Dora Milaje would happily have him back in Wakanda the instant he asked, but he had promised himself that if he went to the United States he would not give into homesickness whenever the whim took him. “People here are... not very welcoming.”

“Brooooother,” Shuri said, appearing back at the bottom of the video frame. “Haven't you made any friends yet? Do you all meet up at a coffee shop?”

“Well, first of all, we're not in New York,” T'Challa said with a faint smile. “And secondly, don't watch too much of that show, it will rot your brain.”

Shuri made an offended sound, crawling up on their mother's lap who obediently wrapped her hands around Shuri's waste. “My brain isn't rotting. My brain is better than yours.”

T'Challa found himself smiling, missing his little sister so dearly it hurt his chest. “Oh really? And who already has a college degree?”

“Only because they say I'm too young still,” Shuri pouted. “Besides! You avoided the question!”

“Yes, he rather did, didn't he?” Ramonda said with a smile down to Shuri and a frown to T'Challa. “Are you alright? Have you found any friends?”

“Yes,” T'Challa said, because Erik had been draped out over his sagging couch the night before, gesturing with one hand while he mockingly read from his business text book, muttering about capitalism the whole time. T'Challa had tried to ignore him, protesting he had his own assignments to finish but he'd ended up laughing until his side hurts. “I've made plenty of acquaintances and yes, even a friend.”

“Just one!” Shuri wailed and Ramonda shushed her from where the child was still on her lap.

“He is a very nice friend,” T'Challa said, even if he knew that wasn't technically true. Erik was many things, sharp and bright and kind and furious, but _nice_ was no way to describe Erik at all.

“I'm sure W'Kabi would come visit!” Shuri said, and gave up sitting on their mother's lap, scrambling down.

“Yes, I'm sure he would,” T'Challa said, crossing his arms and leaning closer to the projection of his family. “How is father?”

“Busy!” Shuri chirped.

“Yes, he is rather,” Ramonda said, reaching out to ruffle Shur's hair as the girl ran circles around her chair. “He worries about you.”

The corner of T'Challa's mouth twitched up. “I can take care of myself. And that's beside the Dora Milaje I know are on this campus anyway.”

“Have you encountered them already?” Ramonda said with a fond smile.

“I have my suspicions of which students they are,” T'Challa said dryly. “After insisting I did not need such protection.”

“You are a prince of Wakanda,” Ramonda said. “You knew from the instant you started insisting you did not need protection that it would occur anyway.”

T'Challa laughed, quiet and soft as he looked away. “Yes, I did. But a prince can dream, can he not?”

“A prince cannot content himself with the dream of getting what he wanted?” his mother asked with a raised brow and T'Challa found himself laughing again.

“True, true. And I have been thrilled with winning that one. Despite the strangeness of this place, and the pain of the people, this will make me a stronger king some day.”

“Yes,” Ramonda agreed. “This friend of yours though,” and T'Challa found himself laughing, this time out of embarrassment. “Do you think we'll ever get the chance to speak to him ourselves?”

“I'd have to install a program on my American computer,” T'Challa said. “And he—he grew up without his parents. He is still a bit, hm, twitchy? When I bring up my family.”

“He sounds lame!” Shuri said, having crawled under their mother's chair, where she was playing with her set of Kimoyo beads.

“He's not,” T'Challa insisted. “He's lived a very different life is all.”

“Is he good to you?” Ramonda asked, a darkness in her eyes.

“Yes,” T'Challa said. “He is even trying to teach me how to cook.”

“What you'd do that for?” Shuri asked. “Takes so long! Better to do other things!”

T'Challa tried not to think about what it felt like to stand next to Erik as he muttered and scolded T'Challa, occasionally brushing their shoulders together, or reaching around him in the tiny kitchen in Erik's apartment. And T'Challa tried not to soak up each touch like a plant turning its face to the sun.

He couldn't quite figure out the sheer intensity of when Erik touched him, as opposed to everyone else. It was not like he grew up touch starved, even as a prince. Nakia had happily wrestled with him on the training grounds when their formal training broke down and they ended up rolling across the grass, trying to get the upper hand on each other through flailing. Those times were the closest to what he felt now, whenever Erik rocked their shoulders together, or ruffled his hair as he teased T'Challa.

Erik's touches were still so carefully guarded though, like he feared in some way simple physical affection.

T'Challa swallowed that thought and smiled at his sister, who had poked her head out to frown at him. “Sometimes the end product is worth it.”

She grunted, not quite agreeing but letting him have his delusions. Which T'Challa could only appreciate as she so rarely even let him have that, and hadn't since she learned how to talk.

“My son,” Ramonda said softly, reaching out to touch her side of the screen. “Please, simply be careful while you are there and away from us.”

“I am mother,” T'Challa promised. “I am.”

-0-

“You know you could probably still sell this tickets for a boat load of money at the door,” Erik said, even though they were already sitting down in the auditorium, Thomas folded politely into his sea and Erik reminding himself this wasn't a place where he had to aggressively take up space just to prove to people he was there.

“Do you not want to be here?” Thomas asked with a smile for the third time.

“I'm just saying.”

“I think we covered money is not an issue,” Thomas said, like he didn't really want to say it and Erik grunted in agreement, needing the reminder as much as he hated the reminder.

Thomas glance down at his phone, frowning for a moment before he closed it. “Isn't he quite late?”

“Yeah, I think you just have to expect that,” Erik said with a shrug. “Something about genius—makes people total assholes sometimes.”

“It doesn't have to,” Thomas muttered. “My sister is a genius and she's—well she's a brat but she's not an asshole.”

“Your sister, huh?” Erik asked with a laugh. “She really that smart or you think you're biased a bit?”

“She really is that smart,” Thomas said and wrinkled his nose. “And annoyingly I think she's only going to get smarter.”

“Smarter?” Erik asked with an arched brow. “How's that?”

“Well, she's four,” Thomas said and Erik found himself laughing, shaking his head.

“Shit, she's four and you're already ready to call her a genius?”

“It's not my fault she can already talk circles around every adult in the room,” Thomas said and Erik found himself pausing because there was such sheer affection on Thomas' face, such fondness for his little sister. It made something in Erik ache, some long suppressed longing for a family.

“Yeah, well, when she grows up, come back to me and let me know if she's still a genius,” Erik said and something lit up in Thomas' eyes, like he truly thought Erik meant that in another fourteen years they would still be friends.

Frankly, Erik rather thought he might either be dead by then or on the verge of recreating a world he wasn't certain Thomas would like.

Which is how he found himself staring at Thomas instead of the stage when Tony Stark finally strolled in, wearing sunglasses and a perfectly pressed suit. And perhaps that explained why he stared at Thomas more than the stage during the whole presentation, as Stark laid out the groundwork of a whole new system of defense management, while throwing grants out to random people in the audience like candy, all while totally drunk. It was obvious in a way that everyone could tell but made no real difference to how brilliant he was except when he stumbled if he turned too fast while walking across the stage.

But despite having known of and respected the man for years, Erik barely looked at him.

Instead he kept staring at Thomas, at the furrow between his brows, the way he tilted his head as he listened to Tony Stark casually attempt to change the world.

He felt sick, wondering what would happen to Thomas, when he never saw him again. If he would ever miss Erik, or if Erik would be locked away at the back of his mind, a fond but ultimately unimportant memory.

It had been a long time since Erik wondered how people might think of him someday, because he never let himself get close enough that they might miss him. Too much of his life was focused on one goal, revenge, and who really could survive such a thing?

At one point Thomas glanced over, when Erik was staring at him too intently in the low lights, and he froze, eyes wide in the darkness as they met Erik's and Erik's hand twitched because he wanted to lean forward and make a home for himself in Thomas, in this stupid foolish boy who hadn't realized he should have run away yet, and who had wormed his way under Erik's defenses.

Erik snapped his eyes back to the stage, anything Stark was saying on stage just white noise.

“Is everything alright?” Thomas asked, softly, at his elbow.

“Yeah,” Erik said, but he didn't mean it at all.

-0-

Later he found himself walking Thomas to the door of his apartment building, still feeling off balance and furious at himself.

“Did Tony Stark live up to all you hoped he would?” Thomas asked, his hands in his pockets.

“I mean, he's brilliant,” Erik said, shrugging. “Always has been. So was his dad, and I'm just glad they were both on our side.”

“He talked a lot about defense today,” Thomas said, and he was still frowning. “Someday what he talked about, what he creates—it will be protecting you, won't it?”

Erik found himself laughing, looking away from Thomas. “Someday, yeah. You probably won't be thinking of me much then,” and it hurt a bit to say it, but not nearly as much as Thomas' hurt expression.

“Why would you say that?”

“I just—come on man. You're going to go back to South Africa and I'm going into the military. It's not like we're going to see each other that much. This just is what it is.”

“You sound like you're preparing to break up with me,” Thomas said, face still heart but voice almost amused except it felt a bit like he'd thrust a knife into Erik's side. As if Thomas had some clue of how much Erik wanted to lean down right then and cover his mouth with his. Then, someday, they really would have to break up, if Erik hadn't been kicked out of the military yet.

“Nah, man, nah,” Erik said, shaking his head and hiding his own hands in his pockets, defensive. “I'm just saying—this is what it is.”

Thomas was still frowning at him, hurt and Erik decided he needed to bail before it got any worse, but he couldn't quite make his feet move. “You going home for break at all?” he asked instead, trying to change the topic.

“No,” Thomas said, finally looking away from him. “It's far, and it's not really encouraged while I am here.”

“That sucks,” Erik said, thinking of the way Thomas' expression had changed, talking about his sister.

“Yes,” Thomas said, softly. “You aren't going anywhere either, are you?”

And Erik was usually a better strategist than this, walking himself right into a discussion of several weeks where they would have no classes and every reason to spend that time together. “Er,” he said. “No.”

Thomas looked at him, as if expectant.

“I'm sure I'll see you around,” Erik said and this time he convinced his feet to actually follow the damn plan. He left Thomas standing there, watching him retreat like the damned fool he was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I once again prove I'm keep showing myself as a DC comics fan over a Marvel comics fan when I realize that T'Challa actually did attend Western university and got a PhD in physics from Oxford while using the name Luke Charles and I'm a little upset I totally missed the opportunity to reference that but I am impressed I pegged him for studying physics with no prior knowledge of the fact that his actual degree. (http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/T%27Challa_(Earth-616))


End file.
